relaying errors etc.

[axslinger]

Ok, here's my setup:
Sendmail running on my local, private network under Linux. Workstations point to my server (192.168.1.1) for my incoming and outgoing email (Fetchmail prefetches my mail from POP accounts for me and dumps in local account).

My sendmail.cf file has my "Smart" relay set to my ISP's smtp server for outgoing. And for the most part it works. However, sometimes I get "Relaying Not Allowed" when I try to send to certain domains. The error is sometimes generated by my own server and sometimes generated by my ISP's server.

My email clients are Outlook, Outlook Express and occasionally I'll login to NeoMail on my server and check my email that way.

Could somebody offer "rules of thumb" for using a server in such a way? Also, is it possible to use my own server (since I know my public IP address) as a my sendmail server when I'm offsite?

Brian

 

[RhythmAce]

If your public ip is static, there is no reason you can't run your own mail, or web server for that matter. First you need a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). You can buy one for about $8.00 a year from

http://www.godaddy.com.

Now you need to create two dns records. First is the "A" (Address) record. This assigns your mail server's name to a public ip address. Then you need to create the "MX" (Mail eXchange) record. This basically says that mail.yourdomain.com will handle the mail for yourdomain.com. You do not need to create a sub-domain name for you mail server. You could just as well say that yourdomain.com handles the mail for yourdomain.com. There is no problem with pointing your mail server and your web server to the same ip because smtp traffic comes in on port 25, pop3 traffic on port 110, http on 80 and so on. If you have a dynamic ip, you can still run a server but you will need to use a dns pointer service such as tzo, noip or dns2go. Some mail servers such as aol's will not accept mail from a server with a residential dynamic ip however.